Hunt for health – it’s a gamble worth taking

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A reassuring bedside manner is not enough for the new Secretary of State. He must be radical as well

When the reshuffle roulette wheel moved Jeremy Hunt to health this week, several other ministers breathed sighs of relief. They saw the job of implementing unpopular and complicated reforms, in an NHS squeezed by the demands of austerity, ageing and obesity, as potentially career-wrecking. But Mr Hunt’s grin at the news of his appointment looked entirely genuine.

The Prime Minister undoubtedly hopes that Mr Hunt will calm the BMA and other vested interests as effectively as he did the luvvies whose arts budgets he cut as Culture Secretary. Mr Hunt has an excellent bedside manner, unlike his precedessor Andrew Lansley,